My laptop has died (insert uncontrollable sobs here).
It wasn’t a new laptop, it was Chris’ old laptop. My laptop had previously been felled by an errant (or not so errant) glass of water, courtesy of Katie. Chris wanted a new one, I took the old one and he got a new one. Lest I look like too much of a martyr, we did get a new desktop, too, which is primarily mine.
But now, no laptop at all. This is going to seriously affect my blogging (!) and working from home.
I’ve been researching a new one. The beauties up at the top are cool but expensive. More money than I had planned to spend this month on computers which, if you’re following along, was $0.
I now have no choice. I have to get a new laptop, or… What? Today’s top ten list constitutes my ten alternatives…
1. I could strap the girls to chairs in the family room and run upstairs periodically to check my email.
2. I could move the desktop in the family room, probably necessitating a replacement of that shortly, as I’m pretty sure the laptop bit the dust as a result of Katie jumping on it (and see what happened to the prior one, above).
3. I could tap out my blog in Morse code.
4. I could handwrite my blog, and ask my secretary to type it in for me at work, which would probably result in her thinking I am more strange than she already thinks now.
5. I could hijack Chris’ laptop, which would irritate him. We’d probably get a new one more quickly. It would probably also be more expensive. He’d insist on something fancy (though he’ll pretend that he won’t).
6. I could stop working from home altogether. Yeah, right.
7. I could bring the girls up into the home office, where they would likely sit quietly as I worked. Wait, my sides are hurting from laughing so hard at that idea…
8. I could get a Blackberry to check email, and blog only at night. Chris uses a Blackberry and I find his addiction quite annoying. I hated my PDA and I had to ditch the fancy cell phone with too many options. I can only anticipate that a Blackberry would be both a disaster for me and a new toy for Amy.
9. I could get a reallllly long USB cable for the keyboard and run it downstairs, thus increasing the possibilities of both multiple typos and broken limbs as I trip over the cord in the middle of the night.
10. Last but not least, I could try to fix the old laptop by reinstalling the hard drive. Only, I’m not really sure what that means. I am trying to sound technologically savvy here.
I’ll let you know when I get a new laptop.
New/old flooring
Originally uploaded by anewla.
Chris and I made a startling discovery today… We have a floor in our bedroom. Yep, an actual hardwood floor. Of course, we knew this years ago when we bought the house but we hadn’t seen it in so long that we’d forgotten that it was there. And in the midst of a cleaning spree this weekend, the floor suddenly reappeared. Amazing.
The spree was brought about by a proliferation of dog hair in the family room. I couldn’t take it anymore. I vacuum every week but we missed last weekend because of my exciting overnight in Center City. I kept pretending that I was going to vacuum during the week and didn’t. And eventually there was enough dog hair that my friend, Madeline, could knit an afghan out of it. It was horrible. So, I started vacuuming. And the cleaning radius spread from the family room to Amy’s room to Katie’s room and then upstairs to our room. I even vacuumed the cob webs off of the walls (yes, there was such a thing) and under the bureaus.
Now, I am obsessed with cleaning the rest of the house. I cleaned the oven, mopped the floors in the kitchen, dining room and living room (okay, more properly, I Swiffered. God bless the creator of Swiffer!).
And then I ran out of steam. So much so that rather than finish, I have actually sat down to blog about housecleaning. How sad is that?
I’m going to dismiss it all by chalking it up to nesting. Little CF (our name for the baby right now) has been kicking up a storm so I’m guessing he or she approves.
In the meantime, I’m going to go upstairs and stare at my floor again. It really exists!
Blech. Having one of those moral dilemmas.
I am not a shrew. In fact, I am fairly proud of the fact that I am not clingy as a wife, I don’t worry when Chris goes out - even if it’s to strip clubs or other such nonsense (though I did put my foot down at the bachelor party where "the guys" hired a stripper for the groom-to-be at his house explicitly against his fiancee’s wishes because I thought it was disrespectful), I don’t read his email, listen to his voice mail or choose his friends. This sounds, to me, normal, but I have friends that regularly monitor and/or loudly voice opinions about what kinds of behavior their respective husbands may or may not engage in. And, quite frankly, I see it a lot the other way around… I have a good friend whose husband listens in our telephone conversations (yes, it’s creepy, so I only call her at work), who has a joint email address (I also find this creepy, sorry if that offends) and never goes out without her spouse. I find that kind of behavior controlling and offensive, she finds it "traditional" and comforting. Whatever.
But back to me. I feel like Chris knows me well enough to know what would offend me and what wouldn’t. So, I trust him. I let him make the calls.
That said, this week he got an invitation to dinner with an old friend. I 100% do not like this old friend - and I’ll tell you why in a moment. I’ve told Chris that I am not going to tell him not to go. It’s not a passive-aggressive thing. I am not hoping that he’ll not go just because I don’t like the old friend. I actually wish he wouldn’t go because of what the old friend represents. But that’s not a conversation that I am willing to have, because it’s not my place.
Sigh.
So, here’s the skinny on the old friend. Chris has known said friend, whom I will cleverly name "Mr. X", long before he knew me - and he has known me for about 12 years (yes, I promised that one day I would tell the story of how we met and started dating, it’s on my list, double-swear!).
I had often heard of Mr. X since he and Chris were quite chummy. In fact, prior to our going out, when we were just friends, Chris spoke of Mr. X’s wedding (to which Chris took his old girlfriend, whom I had also never met but she was quite the source of gossip and speculation at law school based upon that weekend - but that’s for another time). That was in spring, just before I went to Italy for the summer, waaaay back in the day.
During the summer, through a series of events that I swear I will delve into one day, I ended up in Prague with Chris at the same time as Mr. X. This was quite a conundrum for Chris who was concerned about "world colliding, Jerry!" a la Seinfeld, and who, prior to that time, had never allowed his college crowd to mix with his law school crowd. And, as I showed up without warning, there was no time to plan otherwise.
Despite all worries to the contrary, Mr. X and I hit it off quite nicely. He and I come from similar-typed backgrounds though in completely different circumstances. He, too, grew up without privilege and scrapped his way to the top. He was a hard worker, he enjoyed travel, etc. And so, the three of us had a lovely time in Prague, chatting, drinking and shopping for Mr. X’s wife.
Several months later, I met Mr. X’s wife. The four of us started going out quite a bit (by this time, Chris and I were "officially" dating). It was great fun. Mr. X and his wife lived about a block and a half from Chris in the City, and we were near a lot of good restaurants and bars. And, for years, we had mutual happy hours, went out to eat, drank way too much and otherwise had a blast. And all was well.
Then, in 1998, something would happen that would change all of our lives: home ownership (not what you expected, huh?). We started searching for places to live. Chris and I decided to stay in Philadelphia, how could we not? But Mr. X and his wife, citing the wage tax (a bogus argument IMO) started looking in the affluent suburbs. Chris and I thought about it, and didn’t want to be house poor. I enjoyed eating out and going on trips when possible, and I didn’t want to sacrifice that for a mortgage. And, quite frankly, I wasn’t sure that I could stomach life in the suburbs.
I was right on both counts.
Instead of checking out the coolest and newest restaurants, Mr. X and his wife became content to sit at home and order in mediocre pizza, discussing lawn mowers and drinking (gasp) bad beer. Yes, Mr. X had a refrigerator full of Coors.
Increasingly, we spent less and less time with Mr. X and his wife. They started doing un-Mr. X-y things, like running and hanging out with the "beautiful" people in the suburbs who all drove fancy cars and talked about work all of the time. It was a parallel universe.
Two years later, Chris and I got married. Mr. X and his wife were present, but she didn’t drink at our reception - in a beer hall - a sure sign that something was up. And yes, she was pregnant.
We were excited for them. Mr. X had gotten a huge promotion at work and was working all of the time. He was gone for weeks, sometimes, to Boston and so on. And they were making lots of money. Lots. Mr. X’s wife had quit her job, at Mr. X’s request, and stopped going to school, also at Mr. X’s request, to focus on making their home life pretty and preparing for the baby. By all appearances, they had everything together.
Most of my friends in NC had already had babies, but this was my first "city" friend to have a baby. Chris and I went shopping for some baby things, and I also collected some things from other friends, and piled them into our car, waiting for the word.
It was a girl! I called to let them know that we had some things for them. And my calls went unanswered.
One night, about a week after the baby was born, Chris was on the porch with a mutual friend of Mr. X, smoking a cigar and having a beer. The phone rang and it was Mr. X’s wife. She had gotten my message and wanted to let me know that… Mr. X had left her and the baby. Yeah. As in walked right out. She was crying, her mom was there. I told her that I would be right over. I didn’t tell Chris or the friend, I just left and went over to see her.
It was a long night. I had no clue what to say. Little baby X was barely a week old. And this couple, whom I would have bet money would stay together forever - over any other couple I knew, including Chris and I - was no longer.
Fast forward a year or so. They remained separate, wildly so. The divorce was not terribly congenial. The house had to be sold. Mr. X initially showed little or no interest in the baby, usually driving the baby an hour away on visitation days so that his mother could watch her.
When Katie was born, the girls played together. It was weird because I never saw Mr. X after the baby shower, but continued to see his wife long after, even though I had met him first. I was glad, though, because I wouldn’t have even known what to say.
Chris got a call that year from Mr. X, who had moved into a nearby suburb and wanted to know if Chris wanted to hang out. He went over. Chris said they never spoke of the break up, it was as if Mr. X pretended that it never happened.
The whole situation really shook Mr. X’s wife - and me. I am no stranger to divorce, even when kids are involved. My grandfather was married four times. My brother has been married twice, with a daughter from his first marriage. All of my mother’s brothers have been divorced at least once. And many of my friends from high school and college have been married and divorced, most with children. So, it wasn’t the divorce. It was the sudden, unpredictable nature of the break, followed by Mr. X’s inexplicable behavior.
We have all kinds of theories, some of which have been backed up by other things that have happened. There wasn’t another woman or anything else so pedestrian. They apparently grew apart. And perhaps we saw it coming and chose to look the other way. But they had changed so much from when we first met them. For Mr. X, it became about the money, and the address and the position in life. He had, at one time, admitted to Chris that he felt trapped because he didn’t like his job but his lifestyle forced him to keep it. And it seemed to have profoundly changed him.
I worried a lot about what happened with Mr. X shortly after Katie was born. Our lifestyle changed profoundly. And I wasn’t sure what the actual trigger was that accelerated those changes to such an extreme.
I still worry about that from time to time.
I was on the phone today with a friend whose job has just changed, in theory for the better, as has her husband’s. It literally happened in the same month. And she told me that she didn’t know what to do, because they never saw each other anymore. "I never," she remarked, "signed up to be the single mom." Another friend sent me an email that said between the kids’ activities and her own schedule (though she doesn’t work), she sees her husband exactly twice per week.
I actually really like Chris, as you know. I enjoy spending time with him - that’s why we got married in the first place. I can’t fathom a lifestyle where we don’t see each other. But we’re much closer to that place than we have been in years. Is this what happens when you get older? Do you just become complacent about your relationship? Do things matter more than people? It’s a scary thought.
For the most part, we kind of filed what happened to Mr. X and his wife as a cautionary tale. Chris found it awkward to be around Mr. X for awhile, considering the damage that was done. And so he hasn’t seen him for years.
And then, out of the blue, this email comes, inviting him to dinner. And he wants to go. He forwarded it to me with the question, "Any objections?" I have lots. But I don’t think that they’re fair objections. I wouldn’t want Chris to ask me not to see my friends (some of whom I know he finds difficult to take) anymore than I would ask him not to see his. And yet, I still object. Silly? Perhaps. But I don’t want him to go.
I realized that I forgot my Top Ten Monday, and had planned to whip something up this evening. Only now I don’t feel like it. And this is why…
1. I had to drive to suburbia today. I hate to drive anymore. People don’t get the whole red light/green light thing. My daughter understands (red=stop, green=go) but most drivers don’t. They also don’t understand lane changes, turn signals, speed limits and staying in one’s own lanes. It’s scary to drive anymore. Too many idiots on the road.
2. Pregnancy check-up results. I feel that I’ve gained too much weight, doctor didn’t say anything, but I am not happy about it. Eight pounds in five weeks. Blech. I don’t even want to think about it. And my BP is up. Maybe it was the trauma of driving to my appointment. Or maybe it’s just the stress of my life these days.
3. Amy is sick. My little Ames was so sick that she didn’t even want to get out of the crib, according to our nanny. So, I have guilt because while she was home sick, I was out at a Young Professionals for Nutter (Michael Nutter, mayoral candidate to be of Philadelphia - our great hope for the City) event. Event went well, I rushed right out to see her afterwards. She was sleeping quietly when I got home. Fever had passed. Poor kiddo.
And that’s my short synoposis for the day. I’m tired, I’m cranky, I’m not in the mood to blog (horrors!).
Tomorrow is, hopefully, another - and better - day.
